An effort to detect patterns of chemical changes in histones and their impact on gene expression.
Although every cell of our bodies contains the same genetic instructions, specific genes typically act only in specific cells at particular times. Other genes are "silenced" in a variety of ways. One mode of gene silencing depends upon the way DNA, the genetic material, is packed in the nucleus of cells.
When packed very tightly around complexes of proteins called histones, the DNA double helix is rendered physically inaccessible to molecules that mediate gene expression. Now, a research team that includes Michael Q. Zhang, Ph.D., a professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), has published a comprehensive analysis of modification patterns in histones.
Science & Technology
Researchers have devised a technology that can distinguish mine collapses from other seismic activity. Using the large seismic disturbance associated with the Crandall Canyon mine collapse last August, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and colleagues from the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory at UC Berkeley applied a method developed to detect underground nuclear weapons tests to quickly examine the seismic recordings of the event and determine whether that source was most likely from a collapse.
They also found an additional string of secondary surface seismic waves that occurred when the mine collapsed, which are like no other mine collapse events in recent history. The new research appears in the July 11 edition of the journal Science.
The tragic collapse of a Utah coal mine on Aug. 6 resulted in the deaths of six miners. Ten days later, another collapse killed three rescue workers.
They also found an additional string of secondary surface seismic waves that occurred when the mine collapsed, which are like no other mine collapse events in recent history. The new research appears in the July 11 edition of the journal Science.
The tragic collapse of a Utah coal mine on Aug. 6 resulted in the deaths of six miners. Ten days later, another collapse killed three rescue workers.
Ancient stone artifacts reveal the day-to-day lives of Clovis people while offering tantalizing clues of an even earlier culture
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| ©The Gault School |
| Excavations at the Gault site in central Texas |
An unexpected sexual curse has been uncovered by archaeologists at Cyprus's old city kingdom of Amathus, on the island's south coast near Limassol.
Asteroid 2008 BT18 is gliding past Earth this weekend and astronomers have just discovered that it is a binary system. "The sizes of the two components are 600 m for the primary and >200 m for the secondary," says Lance Benner of JPL. "The primary looks spheroidal, but we don't yet know about the shape of the secondary." Benner and others using a giant radar in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, obtained this "delay-doppler" image of the pair on July 7th:
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| ©Arecibo |
Asteroids often come in pairs, with the two objects spinning around each other. Now scientists say sunlight could be the cause of these binary boulders.
A new study suggests energy from the sun can spin up a single asteroid until it ejects material that becomes a separate satellite.
Astronomers first discovered these strange asteroid pairs 15 years ago, and have been puzzled about what causes them. Now scientists have created a computer model that matches what they see.
"So far our results match the properties of binary asteroids quite well," said astronomer Kevin Walsh of the Observatoire de la Cote D'Azur in Nice, France. Walsh led the study when he was a graduate student at the University of Maryland, working with his advisor Derek Richardson and Patrick Michel of the Cassiope'e, University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, in Nice.
A new study suggests energy from the sun can spin up a single asteroid until it ejects material that becomes a separate satellite.
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| ©diagram - Minor Planet Center; image - NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory |
| The main belt is between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and contains countless asteroids. |
Astronomers first discovered these strange asteroid pairs 15 years ago, and have been puzzled about what causes them. Now scientists have created a computer model that matches what they see.
"So far our results match the properties of binary asteroids quite well," said astronomer Kevin Walsh of the Observatoire de la Cote D'Azur in Nice, France. Walsh led the study when he was a graduate student at the University of Maryland, working with his advisor Derek Richardson and Patrick Michel of the Cassiope'e, University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, in Nice.
In the late 19th century Gregor Mendel used peas to show that one copy of a gene (allele) is inherited from the mother and one from the father. In the progeny, the inherited genes are expressed at the right time and in the right place, but until recently, it was thought that although gene products could be modified during the life of the organism, the genes themselves were unchanged, except for random mutation.
Headlines around the world hailed the fossils as "Lucy's Child" and "Lucy's Daughter" when anthropologists first reported finding the skull and bones of a 3-year-old girl who lived and died more than 3.3 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia's Afar Desert.
"But she lived at least 150,000 years before Lucy was ever born, so that little girl couldn't ever have been any child of Lucy," said anthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged with a laugh.
"Yet she certainly belonged to Lucy's lineage - and they both lived in what we can now call the cradle of mankind."
"But she lived at least 150,000 years before Lucy was ever born, so that little girl couldn't ever have been any child of Lucy," said anthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged with a laugh.
"Yet she certainly belonged to Lucy's lineage - and they both lived in what we can now call the cradle of mankind."
The FBI keeps information on 'Escalante Man' discovery from Utah archaeologists, treat the site as a crime scene
An aging American Indian with rotting teeth and arthritic joints sat down and died in the Utah desert outside Escalante with a musket, ammunition and a bucket. Blowing sand covered his corpse for more than a century before a hiker stumbled across it last year.
This is the likely scenario of how a nearly complete skeleton, dubbed "Escalante Man" in BLM documents, came to be buried a few hundred paces off Highway 12 in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. What remains a mystery is why a dozen FBI agents excluded archaeologists from its April 16 excavation, treating the site as a crime scene rather than the historic site many believe it clearly was. "It's an ongoing investigation. Our policy is we cannot comment on it," FBI spokesman Juan Becerra said. Agents stress they had legitimate reasons for excluding the monument's own archaeologist from the dig, even though they invited a TV news crew to document it, and the U.S. Attorney's Office signed off on the investigation. While the BLM and FBI acted in partnership on the dig, the episode has attracted criticism from state officials charged with protecting cultural resources and triggered dissension within the BLM.
An aging American Indian with rotting teeth and arthritic joints sat down and died in the Utah desert outside Escalante with a musket, ammunition and a bucket. Blowing sand covered his corpse for more than a century before a hiker stumbled across it last year.
This is the likely scenario of how a nearly complete skeleton, dubbed "Escalante Man" in BLM documents, came to be buried a few hundred paces off Highway 12 in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. What remains a mystery is why a dozen FBI agents excluded archaeologists from its April 16 excavation, treating the site as a crime scene rather than the historic site many believe it clearly was. "It's an ongoing investigation. Our policy is we cannot comment on it," FBI spokesman Juan Becerra said. Agents stress they had legitimate reasons for excluding the monument's own archaeologist from the dig, even though they invited a TV news crew to document it, and the U.S. Attorney's Office signed off on the investigation. While the BLM and FBI acted in partnership on the dig, the episode has attracted criticism from state officials charged with protecting cultural resources and triggered dissension within the BLM.
When engineers flick the switch to turn on the world's fastest supercomputer later this year it will be capable of chewing its way through 1,000 trillion calculations every second.
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| ©SLP |
| Inside the hard drive. |
